Kristina Killgrove

I'm a bioarchaeologist who learns about the daily lives of ancient Romans by studying their skeletal remains. I feel most at home surrounded by bones, so visiting the Catacombs was unquestionably the highlight of my trip to Paris.

Credit: Kristina Killgrove

Brian Schlining

Growing up, I always wanted to be a marine biologist and loved math. I now do both, working as a software engineer at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in central California. This photo is of my wife and me SCUBA diving off the coast of British Columbia.

Credit: Brian Schlining

Brigette Zacharczenko

I have always loved insects, and obtaining a Ph.D. in entomology has been my dream since I was eight years old. I am studying the evolution and behavior of a genus of moths and their caterpillars. I like to share stories about my research at caterpillarblog.com.

I believe in strengthening my body as well as my mind. After a long day in the lab, nothing feels better than a Crossfit workout. This photo is from a small Crossfit competition, I am doing a push press with 95 pounds.

Credit: Brigette Zacharczenko

Eunice Nuekie Cofie

What I do: President and Chief Cosmetic Chemist of Nuekie, Inc. (www.nuekie.com). I specialize in the research and development of dermatological products for people of ethnic background.

Why I do it: Growing up, I was often teased by my peers because of my dark skin complexion, which affected my self esteem tremendously. My saving grace was my father's encouragement for me to pursue the field of science. He spent countless hours teaching me how to create science experiments. It was there that I fell in love with science and it helped me to gain confidence in myself. This love led me to pursue a career in cosmetic chemistry. From my research, I realized that I wasn't inferior because of my skin color but I was unique. I also realized that there was a lack of innovative products that addressed the unique structure and function of ethnic skin and hair. That was the impetus that I needed to start my own company, Nuekie. My mission is to be a game-changer in the industry and to empower men and women of color to discover that they are perfect in beauty.

Credit: Heather Forrester

Greg Gbur

I'm a theoretical physicist who specializes in research on the wave properties of light. My research is being done to develop new optical communications technologies and to understand the interaction of light and matter on the nanoscale. I'm also a regular skydiver, and in this photo, I'm jumping at an altitude of 5,000 feet from a hot air balloon.

Credit: Greg Gbur, Photo taken by skydiver Terry Hopkins

Katie Pratt

I'm a soon-to-be-PhD molecular biologist. My thesis work has focused on understanding the control of gene expression during early frog oocyte development. This picture was taken just over a year ago when I decided to start a science blog (insert shameless self-promotion: KatiePhD.com. We have a bunch of old goggles in the lab and, being a natural fool, I plunked a pair on my nose during the photo shoot. Luckily they matched my shirt...

Credit: Katie Pratt, Photo by Greg Shumchenia

Martin Pratt

I'm a graduate student studying seismology at Washington University in St. Louis. My current research area is looking at seismic signals released by a glacier in Antarctica, known as the Whillans Ice Stream, which is where this photo was taken. For the last two seasons we've deployed a number of seismic and GPS instruments over the glacier to try and understand its motion and temporal variability.

I've always had an interest in geology, and the fact that you get to go to interesting, beautiful and sometimes extreme places is a bonus. My interest in geophysics, though, has been a recent development. I'm continually amazed at what information can be teased out of a set of time series signals that gives us an insight into places of the Earth we can never reach.

Credit: Martin Pratt

Mike Jones

I study evolution because of its sheer aesthetic beauty, and am particularly interested in traits and behaviors that are the products of co-evolution between different species. In this picture, I'm standing in the mouth of Wedgemount glacier, in the southern Coast Mountains of British Columbia. Like many glaciers in the region, it has retreated substantially over the past several years. (Here's a related story).

Credit: Mike Jones

Zoe Louise Matthews

I completed my PhD at the University of Birmingham. I spent 18 months at CERN working on the ALICE experiment, studying quark-gluon-plasma. This is the state nuclear matter existed in 10 microseconds after the big bang, when the environment was so hot, nuclear matter melted into its tiniest building blocks—quarks and gluons. This form of matter is reproduced in collisions of lead ions at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland for around 10^-30 seconds. In the photo I am standing in front of the ALICE Detector, 80 meters below a sleepy village in France called St. Genis Pouilly, where the collisions happen and are measured.

I now work at the University of Liverpool as a nuclear research scientist, studying the effects of compressing heavy nuclei and comparing the behavior of neutrons and protons. I love physics: it answers some of the biggest, smallest, most complex and most simple questions we can ask about the world around us. I am fascinated by the discoveries and understanding it has brought us. I hope to be a teacher someday, so that I might inspire others to see what I see. I think we should all be scientists, if not in occupation, at the very least in spirit.

Credit: Zoe Louise Matthews